Yahoo publishes first transparency report, US tops snooping list

Following in the footsteps of other tech giants, Yahoo has published its first ever transparency report revealing how often governments request data about its users. According to the information, the majority of requests came from the US.

The report presents information on global
government data requests that Yahoo received between January 1
and June 30 of this year. The move comes in the wake of the NSA
leak scandal, following which technology titans in the Silicon
Valley fell under criticism for helping governments spy on their
citizens.

“At Yahoo, we take the privacy of our users seriously. We also
recognize our role as a global company in promoting freedom of
expression wherever we do business,” Ron Bell, Yahoo’s
General Counsel, said in a Friday statement.

The document shows that US government agencies made 12,444 data
requests from Yahoo, covering 40,322 user accounts.

The company disclosed at least some user data for 92 percent of
requests. In 4,604 cases, Yahoo shared information on account
content data, and in 6,798 cases it disclosed non-content data.
The latter includes basic subscriber details such as those
provided by users during their registration with Yahoo, including
their name, “location, IP-address, login details, billing
information, and other transactional information.”

According to the document, Germany is ranked second on the list,
with 4,295 requests from the government. Italy placed third, with
2,637 requests.

Yahoo underlined that less than 0.01 percent of its user accounts
worldwide were involved in these requests.

“Our legal department demands that government data requests be
made through lawful means and for lawful purposes. We regularly
push back against improper requests for user data, including
fighting requests that are unclear, improper, overbroad or
unlawful. In addition, we mounted a two-year legal challenge to
the 2008 amendments to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act
and recently won a motion requiring the U.S. Government to
consider further declassifying court documents from that
case,” said Bell.

From now on, Yahoo has vowed to publish transparency reports
every six months.

The transparency issue rose to the forefront after NSA
whistleblower Edward Snowden, a former CIA employee and NSA
contractor, leaked classified documents detailing massive
electronic surveillance by the US government and foreign allies
that collaborated with them.

Snowden fled the US and began leaking classified documents to the
media. A number of international outlets have published the
revelations, made possible by the analysis of top-secret files.
According to The New York Times, Snowden supplied reporters with
50,000 documents. The Guardian’s Glenn Greenwald said at least
dozens were, in his opinion, newsworthy.

The latest leaked documents reveal that US and British spy agencies have
invested billions of dollars towards efforts to make online
privacy obsolete, by circumventing the encryption methods used to
secure emails, chats, and essentially most internet traffic that
was previously believed to be protected from prying eyes.